Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Worst charities

A few weeks ago, CNN exposed America's worst charities in their report titled "Above the law: America's worst charities". Partnered with the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting, they carried out a year-long investigation and revealed that these charity organizations devote less than 4% of donations to direct cash aid. Most of donations were given to corporate solicitors. It is so gross that I felt compelled to blog about it to just spread the word so that more people can be aware of the scams.

Looking at the list of the 50 worst charities in America, I realize that I have donated to over half of the top 10 worst charity organizations on the list in the past several years! Errr....the fact is most of my donations were actually devoted to these parasites and scam artists, when I thought I was donating for good causes and helping out those in need...

This has also reminded me of the nightmare of those intrusive charity calls. For a while, we were bombarded with charity solicitation calls 24/7, to a degree that we couldn't carry on a conversation without being interrupted every 5 minutes at our dinner table. Some of the telemarketers were extremely unprofessional and rude that all they wanted to do was to guilt you into giving them your hard-earned money. Once when I said no to a charity telemarketer (because I already donated to that organization not long before his call), he said back in a disbelieving tone, "Oh so you DON'T want to help those firefighters??? " and that made me feel sick to my stomach for days!

It surely is an eye-opener. Going forward I will not just donate to anybody, instead I will stick to those who are reputable and respect my privacy and wishes.

So here are what I'm going to do in the future:
  1. Say no to all the telemarketers. Surely I will no longer feel guilty to say NO! Seriously, in the digital age where Internet and social media thrive, you still have to rely on intrusive telemarketing calls to do your fundraising? 
  2. Do my research homework and select those reputable charitable organizations who have good track records to make donations. 
  3. Reduce unwanted mail by sending "fundraising reduction notice" letters
Here are some good tips from Charity Watch: seven tips on reducing unwanted mail and phone appeals: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/seventips.html

Key questions to ask someone requesting a charitable donation from CNN:
• What is the full name of the charity?
• Do you work for a paid fundraiser?
• How much of my donation actually goes to charity?
• Will any local programs directly benefit? If so, how?
• What is the website address of the charity?

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